The Monday Night Prayers That Toppled a Wall

In the autumn of 1989, Pastor Christian Fuhrer opened the doors of St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, East Germany, for Monday evening prayer, just as he had done for seven years. What began in 1982 with a handful of believers had swelled beyond anything he imagined. By October 9th, seventy thousand people filled the streets outside the church, carrying candles and singing hymns — facing down a regime armed with tanks and secret police.

The East German government had seemed as permanent as granite. The Stasi surveilled every whisper. The Berlin Wall stood as an immovable monument to human power. Yet the Psalmist had already written the ending: "The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth."

Exactly one month after that October prayer gathering, the Wall fell. No army breached it. No bomb shattered it. A bureaucrat fumbled an announcement at a press conference, crowds surged to the checkpoints, and the guards simply stepped aside. An empire that had endured for forty years dissolved in a single evening.

Psalm 97 declares that the Most High reigns above all the earth, that righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Pastor Fuhrer and his congregation discovered what the Psalmist already knew — no regime, no ideology, no wall built by human hands can stand when the Almighty decides it is time for it to fall. The Lord reigns. Let the earth be glad.